Act prediction and the conceptual analysis of personality scales: Indices of act density, bipolarity, and extensity.

Abstract

Harvard UniversityKenneth H. CraikUniversity of California at BerkeleyA framework for conceptual analysis is advanced that attempts to specify thedifferent kinds of act predictive statements that can be made about personalityscales. Three formal indices were denned and operationalized: act density, actbipolarity, and act extensity. An empirical exploration of the framework was appliedto the analysis of 22 personality scales ostensibly subsumed by six dispositionalconstructs. Results reveal several patterns that may elude more traditional vali-dational and conceptual-analytic strategies. The assumption of bipolarity is ques-tioned. Discussion focuses on the implications of this scheme for scale development,taxonomy construction, and theory building in personality psychology.Although a central goal of personality scalesis to predict behaviors dispersed over time,validation and conceptual analysis of suchmeasures have usually taken less direct forms.Cronbach and Meehl's (1955) classic articleon construct validity helped to generate aquarter century of work on validational de-siderata. Terms were rapidly introduced tosharpen the diverse forms that validity cantake: Loevinger (1957) discussed substantivecomponents (item contents and universes in-cluded and excluded from a scale), structuralcomponents (interitem correlations and thedegree to which these parallel or map ontothe structure of nontest trait manifestations),and external components (item and totalscale correlations with nontest criteria) ofconstruct validity; Campbell and Fiske (1959)introduced converging and discriminating cri-teria for clarifying scale precision; and Gough(1965), from a different viewpoint, introducedprimary, secondary, and tertiary evaluationprocedures by which the range and meaningof scales can be successively appraised.The purpose of this article is to offer a dif-ferent approach to the conceptual analysis ofpsychological tests—one that directly addressesthe implications of personality scale scores foreveryday conduct. As such, the present ap-proach is not immediately concerned with